Tag Archives: computer-science

InnoVidya and IUCAA a talk by Prof. K.P. Mohanan on “An Introduction to Inquiry-Oriented Education” on Saturday, July 20, 2013, at 11am, at Bhaskara 3 Hall, IUCAA. This is the next talk in the InnoVidya/IUCAA SPARK lecture series.

Abstract of the talk:

Scientific inquiry is a form of rational inquiry that seeks knowledge by formulating our ignorance as questions and arriving at answers on the basis of data/observations. Most forms of science education focus on helping students to understand a body of knowledge — the conclusions resulting from scientific inquiry — and to apply that knowledge to solve problems. As an alternative, I have been pursuing an inquiry-oriented form of science education that goes beyond understanding and application, to help students acquire the capacity to engage in scientific inquiry, to function not only as consumers of knowledge, but also as producers of knowledge.

In this talk, I will briefly outline what my colleagues and I have been doing to bring scientific inquiry into classrooms, textbooks, and examinations. It should be of interest to both students and educators.

About the Speaker – Prof. K.P. Mohanan

K.P. Mohanan received his PhD from MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), under Noam Chomsky, and taught at the University of Texas in Austin, MIT, Stanford University and National University of Singapore. At NUS, he initiated the General Education Program for undergraduate students, and as part of this program, created a web course on Academic Knowledge and Inquiry (http://wiki.nus.edu.sg/display/aki).

In January 2011, he moved to IISER-Pune to set up and develop the Centre for Integrative Studies. At IISER, he has created a three-course package on rational inquiry, covering scientific, mathematical, and conceptual inquiries. He is currently engaged in developing courses and programs on different types of inquiry based learning for high school and college students.

About the InnoVidya IUCAA Spark Program

The SPARK program is a series of events jointly conducted by InnoVidya and IUCAA. These are special events that <spark> imagination & curiosity of our young, build bonds between participants of different disciplines, catalyze interactivity & promote peer links

About InnoVidya

InnoVidya is a group of educators and industry professionals who want to reach out to students, teachers, trainers and working professionals and catalyze significant improvements in their learning ecosystems. In addition to the InnoVidya website and the InnoVidya mailing list, we also hold public lectures on the 4th Saturday of every month. Lectures usually involve talks by senior educators, industry visionaries, or social and/or for-profit entrepreneurs working in the space of higher education.

We are currently based in Pune, but we expect that this initiative will expand all over India.

InnoVidya and IUCAA invite everyone to a lecture on the life and time of Alan Turing, widely considered the father of computer science, by Dr. Mathai Joseph, who can be considered one of the senior most computer scientists in Pune.

Alan Turing, was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, giving a formalisation of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer. The most important award in computer science, the Turing Award, is named after Alan Turing.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth, and hence we are celebrating it with a talk on his life and his contributions to computer science. This talk is targeted towards anyone interested in computers – no special knowledge of computer science will be assumed.

About the Speaker – Dr. Mathai Joseph

Dr. Mathai Joseph did his PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK, and joined the Tata Institute of F undamental Research in 1968. He was appointed to a Chair in Computer Science at the University of Warwick in 1985. At various times, he has been a visiting professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Warwick and University of York.

He joined Tata Consultancy Services in 1997 as an Executive Vice President and was the Executive Director of the Tata Research Development and Design Centre until his retirement in 2007.

He was Chairman of the Board of the International Institute for Software Technology from 2 005-2007 . He has written several books and numerous papers.

Mathai Joseph was elected as a Member-at-Large of the ACM Council in 2008. He is the President of ACM India and has been a member of the ACM India Council since it was formed in 2009.

About InnoVidya

InnoVidya is a group of educators and industry professionals who want to reach out to students, teachers, trainers and working professionals and catalyze significant improvements in their learning ecosystems. In addition to the InnoVidya website and the InnoVidya mailing list, we also hold public lectures on the 4th Saturday of every month. Lectures usually involve talks by senior educators, industry visionaries, or social and/or for-profit entrepreneurs working in the space of higher education.

We are currently based in Pune, but we expect that this initiative will expand all over India.

If you’re interested in the state of education in India, please subscribe to email/RSS updates at: http://innovidya.org.

Event Details

The event is on Saturday, January 19 , 2013, at 11am, at the Chandrashekhar Auditorium, IUCAA, at University of Pune campus.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. There is no need to register.

Most CS and engineering graduates will end up working for the many software companies in India. This is undoubtedly a very good career for most of the graduates. However, is it the right career for those who are at the top of the class or those who seek technical and technology challenges? This talk is for such graduates, who find a “regular” software job not sufficiently satisfying. It discusses what research is, some aspects of a researcher, and the possibilities of a career in research in India – which besides being more challenging, is now getting more rewarding as well.

Time: Registration and Tea – 6:45 PM Session – 7:00 PM- 8.30 PMProgram is open to all but prior registration is required. Click Here to Register

About the Speaker – Pankaj Jalote

Pankaj Jalote has recently joined as Director of the newly created Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi. Prior to this, he was the Microsoft Chair Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Delhi. Before this he was with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur since 1989, where he was also the Head of the Department from 1998 to 2002. Earlier he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, where he also held joint appointment in the Institute of Advanced Computer Studies. From 1996 to 1998, he was Vice President (quality) at Infosys Technologies Ltd., a large Bangalore-based company providing software solutions worldwide, where he spearheaded Infosys' successful move to high maturity levels of the CMM. From 2003 to 2004 he was a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, USA.

He is the author of CMM in Practice , (Addison Wesley, 1999), a book that has been translated in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean; Software Project Management in Practice (Addison Wesley, Feb 2002); the highly popular textbook An Integrated Approach to Software Engineering, (Springer 1991, 2nd Edition 1996, 3rd Edition 2005), whose Indian edition was recognized as the bestselling book in computer science by its local publisher; and the graduate-level book Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems , (Prentice Hall, 1994). He is on the Board of Advisors of many software companies in India and USA, is a Technical Advisory Board member for Microsoft Research, India, has served on the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and International Journal of Emperical Software Engineering.